


Voices of the Past

by BlueJubilation



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Keith (Voltron), Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Prekerberos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 02:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16008725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueJubilation/pseuds/BlueJubilation
Summary: Keith reflects on his past.





	Voices of the Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [volleycatnika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/volleycatnika/gifts).



> Dedicated to Nika for sticking with me.
> 
> Big thanks to volleycatnika for doing beta for me!
> 
> I started writing this many many months ago before s7 or anything prekerberos was established. It's written with the idea of Keith being a little older than in canon while in the Garrison. Consider it an alternate universe. Comments regarding their age will not be tolerated nor will any anti behavior. Take it elsewhere.

The sun beats down harshly on the sandy terrain as soon as it peeks over the rocky outcroppings, chasing many critters to seclusion until the day bleeds into evening. Unperturbed by the heat, Keith sticks out like a sore thumb as he trudges through in the desert, bright red and black upon a wasteland of beige. When his time isn’t taken up by idle drawing and charting, his days are spent wandering, seeking out the mysterious force hidden within the earth that beckons him.

As twilight turns to night, Keith finally returns home with sweaty clothes, matted hair, caked on filth and a mind full of questions. Slipping into his shack, he shuts the door behind him with a soft click, sagging against the door. Keith slides down to the floor with a grunt, leaning his head back to peer up at the ceiling, letting the physical exhaustion of the day settle into his bones.

A light breeze whisks the sand around, brushing against the exterior of the shack. It weasels its way into small cracks and crevices that he’d forgotten to cover up. He’d get to it later.

  
It takes little time for his ears to tune out the sounds to nothing. That nothing turns into the white noise that grows in volume, morphing into venomous whispers only he can hear. They all want to be heard and scramble to fight to the forefront. Their tendrils weave around, sinking into whatever crevice they touch in his brain and squeezed. The pressure brings forth times he thought he had long pushed away and forgotten. The longer they linger, the more he grows frustrated. He can’t remember the last time his head was at peace.

No, that was a lie. He did have times without the voices. Those moments were warm and safe. It was those moments that he was at his most vulnerable, yet he knew he couldn’t have been in a safer place. Remembering them only brought him pain in the present and the ever looming threat of hurt in the future.

Skin crawling, the tendrils poking and prodding kept him from slipping into a state of serenity. He flinched at the slightest noise that didn’t belong. A simple scratch along the exterior of his shack brings his mind back to reality, a spike of adrenaline filling his veins. Sleep was nearly impossible to capture when he became like this. It was a cruel mistress. She lingered and tempted, always out of reach.

Keith peels himself up from the floor with a grimace painted on his face. He removes his jacket and throwing it over the back of his ratty, beaten couch. In the jacket’s place, Keith grabbed one of the only blankets he owned from the floor, and collapsed on the couch with it, taking in the familiar sounds of the couch’s strained groans from the sudden weight.

  
It takes several hours for Keith to fall into a dream, however this dream was just another memory that he gripped too tightly onto.

He was back at the Garrison. The room was familiar, though it was not his own. It was fairly tidy aside from a few books strewn about and a disheveled bed from use. Shiro sat at his desk looking over files he was assigned to earlier in the day. Keith sat on the bed, book resting in front of him as he took notes on the notebook perched on his thigh.

“Hey, Shiro?” Keith asked, looking up from his notes at Shiro.

“Hm?” Shiro hummed in reply without moving from his seat.

“Can you come here for a sec?”

Shiro switched off his data pad, gingerly setting it down on his desk. Pushing his chair away from the desk, Shiro traversed the few steps between the desk and the bed. Leaning over into Keith’s personal space, he put his hands in his pockets. “What’s up?”

“Can you go over this particular part right here?” Keith gestures to a paragraph near the end of the page on the book. “I want to make sure I’ve got the information in the right order.”

Shiro motions for Keith to scoot over, plopping down beside him with practiced ease. Reaching across Keith’s lap, Shiro pulls the book towards him to examine the passage more closely. “I thought you had this information down pact? Didn’t you recite this process to me the other day?” Shiro looked over at Keith with a raised eyebrow.

“Well yea, but how else would I get you away from your desk? “Keith leaned forwards, stealing a chaste kiss from his superior officer’s lips. A grin spread across Keith’s face, enjoying the sight of genuine surprise on Shiro’s face as he rested their foreheads together.

Shiro very quickly closed the book and took Keith’s notebook from Keith’s leg, dumping them on the floor without breaking eye contact with Keith. Shiro threw his arms out and grabbed Keith, pulling both down to the bed as a strangled squawk of surprise left Keith’s mouth.

Keith struggled in Shiro’s grip, but Shiro’s iron clad grip refused to comply with his request. Keith’s face scrunched up as Shiro peppered his face his kisses, but stopped squirming, accepting his fate. Keith could feel the heat ride to his face, starting at his ears only to spread to his cheeks. Shiro moved his hands to cup Keith’s face, squishing Keith’s cheeks together.  
“Are you gona kiss me on the mouth or keep looking at me like I’m some kind of fuzzy chipmunk?” Keith grumbled, struggling to get the words out through squished cheeks.

Shiro chuckled, gently tracing his thumb across Keith’s lower lip. “This is a good look for you.” Keith felt like he should implode on the spot from the embarrassment filling his body. Shiro smiles, sealing their lips together with a kiss before Keith could get another word in.

Keith jolted awake with a gasp, frantically scanning his surroundings. Oh, that’s right. He was in the shack, not back at the Garrison. Not in the safe and warm embrace of Shiro with the warm feeling of his lips on his own. Keith reached up, gingerly touching his own lips, replaying the memory over and over in his head.

Shiro was a top pilot at the Garrison, and that brilliance had earned him a spot on the Kerberos mission. Keith was absolutely ecstatic and he couldn’t have been more proud of Shiro. The launch went as smoothly as possible, and to Keith’s knowledge, everything involving the mission went off without a hitch.

It wasn’t long after the mission began that the news of failing due to a pilot error reached Keith’s ears. Keith was dead set on calling out the bullshit on that claim. Shiro was one of the top pilots at the Garrison, there’s no way a ‘pilot error’ could’ve occurred.

Keith did everything in his power to find out what exactly had happened, but he was kicked out of the school before he could after a show of insubordination a.k.a his fist meeting Iverson’s eye. That never stopped him from trying to sneak in to find out more information, but he still came up with empty hands. Now he lives in the shack not too far from the school itself.

Keith sat up, a grimace set into his facial features. He turns his head over to one of the few windows in his shack. Lounging on the outer lip of his windowsill is a small, brown lizard. With the night sky as the backdrop, the scene was like a post card you would send a loved one back home that didn’t have the opportunity to join you on a trip to the desert. All that’s missing is the standard cactus nestled in the sand.

Keith knew just about every constellation in the sky above his head. Something deep down told him that if he looked hard enough, maybe they would give him a clue to Shiro’s whereabouts. He used to jump at the slightest twinkle of a star and plaster himself to the window, hoping with every fiber of his being that something would happen. Something that would bring his past back to him and rid him of his present self.

This time was no different as another star above him twinkled. His muscles didn’t tense in anticipation like they usually did. The little voices in his mind tickled with their ghastly laughter, dragging his hope down into the depths. However, his eyes didn’t leave that spot in the sky.

The star grows in size until realization hits him. That isn’t a star, that’s a ship! Keith jumps up throwing his blanket to the ground haphazardly, grabbing a few essentials on his way out: keys to his hoverbike, a scarf to cover the lower half of his face, and some explosives.


End file.
